Flower Mound High School graduate Sameeka Kalavagunta believes her online startup, Trravo, will help local students and residents find work in their community.
Now a sophomore computer science major at Texas A&M University, Kalavagunta described the website as an “online neighborhood marketplace” where residents can connect with local students that are looking for small jobs to pick up.
“Babysitting, dog sitting, it could be somebody asking ‘please help me take out my trash,’ it could truly be anything,” she said. “And the age range we have is 13-25, so middle schoolers, high schoolers and college students back home to visit for the summer or breaks.”
The idea for Trravo started when Kalavagunta was a junior at Flower Mound High. She wasn’t quite old enough to get hired at local businesses, but wanted to find a way to make money.
“I was looking into babysitting and other neighborhood jobs I could do and my dad would have to send me screenshots from Facebook or Nextdoor and I would go to bulletin boards around town with a bunch of job postings,” she said. “The thing is, students don’t often use Facebook or Nextdoor, so I saw these jobs being posted on there and thought it was an opportunity that a lot of students were looking for, but missing out on.”
Kalavagunta said Trravo’s goal is to put job postings all in one place, making it easier for students and residents to connect for local jobs, but to also make it safer and help both customers find exactly who they’re looking for.
According to the Trravo website, the business hopes to provide skill development and flexible opportunities for students while also connecting the community.
Kalavagunta said she hopes the site will be able to help residents with disabilities get local, reliable help with chores around the house.
“That’s the whole point – to centralize everything on one platform, because I don’t think you can convince students to actually go use Facebook,” she said. “Plus, safety is a huge aspect of it with every bio that is written and submitted as an application manually reviewed to make sure it matches our community guidelines.”
A big reason Kalavagunta started Trravo was seeing how it could impact her hometown of Flower Mound.
While she is still in the process of improving and developing the site, Kalavagunta said she has relied a lot on the community throughout the process. She visited the farmer’s market at the River Walk over the summer to get local input.
“Talking to my community has been one of the most motivating things because it shows I am able to give back to a community that’s given so much to me,” she said. “I love Flower Mound and I’ve lived here in the same house my whole life, so it’s great to talk to my community and tell them my ideas and see how it benefits people, because when you’re building something, you always have that feeling in your mind that no one will like it.”
Kalavagunta started designing the website in high school with some helpful guidance from her dad and some family-friend developers before a short setback when she applied for college and moved down to College Station.
Now improving her coding skills with classes at A&M, Kalavagunta has been able to work on her craft and improve the Trravo site.
“This was really a great experience for me to dip my toes in different aspects of computer science,” she said. “But it has really helped me work on the website. The timing worked perfectly with what I was learning, so it has overall been a great experience.”
For Kalavagunta, working for herself has been both a struggle and very rewarding.
“As a startup founder, I’m the only one pushing for this. If I don’t give anything, no one else is going to,” she said. “So, just having that realization was something that motivated me a lot, knowing I’m in charge of this. And, being a startup and an entrepreneur, there’s no one else telling you what to do.”
It’s a whole lot different than the schedule of a student.
“As a student, you have homework, you have deadlines and due dates but with this, you don’t have any of that,” said Kalavagunta. “So switching my mindset to be more result-oriented, setting aside time every day and making sure I was getting things done really helped.”
When Kalavagunta started on the project, she brought it to her dad, who was in full support. Now, her whole family gets in on the action.
“It’s been great working on it as a family. It’s not just me working on it, my whole family gets involved,” she said. “My mom tests the website for bugs, my sister makes marketing content, so it’s truly amazing to see my whole family involved in something that I love so much. It just motivates me more.”
